The reason I don’t have a plan is because if I have a plan I’m limited to today’s options.

You’re only given a little spark of madness.
You must not lose it.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?

…moments of insight are a very-well studied psychological phenomenon.

There really are two defining features. The first defining feature is the answer comes out of the blue. So it comes when we least expect it. It comes when we’ve quit the music business, and we’re trying to paint a canvas in Woodstock, New York. It comes when we’ve given up, when we feel like we have nothing left to say.

It comes in the shower. It comes in the bathtub. It comes under the apple tree. So it comes in the least expected moments. That’s the first defining feature.

The second defining feature is that as soon as the answer arrives, we know this is the answer we’ve been looking for. We don’t have to double-check the math or carefully edit the lyrics: We know this is it. So, you know, the answer comes attached with this feeling of certainty – it feels like a revelation. So these are the two defining features of these moments of insight, and they do seem to play a big role in creativity, especially when people are looking for really radical solutions to very, very hard problems.

The virtue of youth, after all, is that the young don’t know enough to be insiders, cynical with expertise…

We can continue to be innovate if we maintain the perspective of the outsider… If you are bored, start again.

Outsider creativity isn’t a phase of life. It’s a state of mind… We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don’t know what we’re talking about.

We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.